audio control before slide content for accessibility

I realize I am late to this discussion but I have been trying to research this issue online with little success. I have seen the "three tab" rule mentioned on some sites, but the W3C page only says the control should be "near" the top of the page or "early in the tab order" (see https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/G170) . So there is no real criterion for the number of tabs before reaching the pause button. Since it's common for the number of tabs to the player controls to vary, creating a button higher in the order for some slides and not for others would be maddening (and probably violate the consistent navigation standard). So what is the best practice? Is having the play/pause in the media controls enough to meet the SC, or it is better to add a button that is consistently at the top? Is there a solution that would allow most users to select autoplay from a starting slide that would override the button on individual slides? How are other people doing this? 
Thanks!